How to build your own pulsed laser pistol

Self-declared Mad Scientist and Instructables user [Trevor Nestor] recently built a pulse laser pistol and decided to share his build process, so that you too can build a ray gun at home. The gun is made up of mostly scavenged components, save for the Neodymium:YAG laser head, which he purchased on eBay for about $100. He does say however, that you can score an SSY-1 laser from an old rangefinder, providing you hang out near a stockpile of decommissioned Abrams tanks.

[Trevor] walks you through the process of recycling old disposable cameras to get enough components for a capacitor bank, as well as how the charging circuit should be constructed. He also discusses how the laser head needs to be wired, before showing off the finished laser pistol in a cheeky video, embedded below.

While the gun lacks the finish of this laser pistol we showed you, it’s no less potent when shooting through plastics, wood, and thin metals. It’s a great starting point if you are looking to build a laser of your own, leaving room for improvements, such as a faster charging circuit.

i would like to see a steady cam built in his next video. man that was a long charge. maybe he can do some thing with auto switching instead of doing it him self. he looked a bit nerves each time he had to.

I see things like this as a step to dealing with the time when authorities start using pervasive aerial drone surveillance. Although a YAG laser is probably overkill, a high power laser diode would probably be enough.

No need to damage the craft its self, just frying the optics is enough.

1. sit in front of a table not on the floor
2. use a room with enough light
3. use a camera with a decent quality
4. if you pretend being a scientist behave like one, seriously, a lab coat and Bermuda shorts?!
5. keep the camera steady and focused
6. remove disturbing objects (the vacuum cleaner wtf?)
7. say what you want to say but keep it short use clean and well spoken international English. Write it down first this helps!

that video was horrible but the gun was pretty cool.
“it doesnt always fire but a simple soldering job would fix that. I’m just too lazy” is not something to say in a video. self deprecation is not a good practice.
and i am the last person to whinge about safety but good lord, that is a pulsed laser he’s pointing around. goggles!

Hopefully he’ll keep working on this project and take it from a silly toy to something awe-inspiring. A mazzilli ZVS flyback for charging those capacitors will make it go several orders of magnitude faster. And an enclosure so there aren’t deadly voltages and haphazard connections everywhere would make it look better.
dropping the sounds would also help but that’s his personal preference and OK as long as there is a mute.

To poster: next time you do a video that is 8 minutes long, you should shoot at least 16 distinct things. Youtube users don’t have the patience to listen to you jabber on about how slow it charges; just skip to the shots.

ALSO, SOME OF US USE HEADPHONES, SO DON’T PUT LOUD BEEPS IN YOUR F**KING VIDEO!

All right all right I know I had a crappy camera and I was filming at grandpa’s quit your whining XD. I just wanted to get instructions on how to build it out for those who were interested since it has not yet been done, and someone requested a video showcasing it so I did. Anyways I added in an annotation to alert viewers that the firing is at 7:40. I will be posting a better video of it firing for those who are interested, just working on getting a better camera. Thanks

Pulsed laser using solid crystals i.e. those 20W laser bars would also work.
I hear that some of these can be momentarily pulsed to 50W IF kept cool enough i.e. below ambient.
The voltage threshold changes as well but if you take this into account and wrap 5 of them minus most of the heatsink round a central YAG core and Q switch it then you would get a burst of light that would exceed several MW pulsed.

ebay has these for not much money, its scary just how easy it is to buy them. Not that I am complaining, you can get 2W C*s*o diodes for under £50 now :-)

Cool, pseudo ball lightning on your desk! Thats cool.
Wonder if you could use this effect to scan a larger area and then ionise along the spiral path to make a REAL ball lightning using the PMK principle? If so then that would be really cool and probably end up classified but hey…

According to SAM’s laser FAQs, it seems like the power supply constructed for this laser is way too big. Supposedly you can fire one of these at its full rated power with a 900V 36uF capacitor. The bank created for this “ray gun” is easily a few thousand uF at somewhere between 600-1000V. Not only is that needlessly dangerous but its also going to ruin your fragile flashlamp. Its also very unlikely that it is providing you with any extra output power.

Forget all these negative comments – keep pumping out the projects, this was one of the most interesting (and funny) things I’ve seen in a long time. Thanks!! Oh and btw – the video of your dad’s song, very nice but difficult to make out the lyrics, remix and de-emphasize the guitar, it really isn’t the focus of the song afterall, the words are. :)

I must on the whole the average commentator is a 6th grade drop out living in their parents basement who hasn’t done anything like this, much less buit a radio (am, heatkit). When you children build BETTER then show your work until then, go back to your dreamcast game collection. ya whiny little brats.
p.s. it’s called lab coat you idiot.